Sunday, November 06, 2005

Mobius, over at Jewschool, is noting the Arab media's reaction to the UN's decision, last week, to institute a 'Holocaust Remembrance Day.' What is much more interesting, imo, is how little coverage the decision received in the British press, where, you would have thought, it was of interest following recent attempts to have the British Holocaust Memorial Day cancelled. Are they simply too parochial? Or is the Holocaust only really of interest here when it's linked to Muslim issues?Along the same kinds of lines, I am also interested to see how little coverage the riots in Denmark, over the last few days, have received in the so-called 'mainstream media' (a quick search for 'Denmark' on Google News shows hardly anything; I've seen nothing at all on this on tv news; in the blogosphere, however, it's a different matter altogether). For those of you who have missed what's going on, the Daily Telegraph (to its credit) ran a good story on this yesterday; more here and here.In a way, although the Danish riots were so much smaller than the French ones, and seem to be over, they are even more significant. The Muslim element was so much more pronounced; it was all explicitely done to defend the 'honor' of Islam; the rioters admit that it was all planned in advance; freedom of speech is under attack in ways already experienced elsewhere in Europe. Why is the media playing scant attention -- particularly when it would fit in so well with a story on what's going on in France? Simply, it just does not fit their political agenda -- which would also explain why the French riots were played down until day 5 or 6, when they became impossible to ignore -- by which time the blogosphere, a much better measure of public interest in any particular story, was already all over it.